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The Pinochet File

by Peter Kornbluh (New Press; $29.95)

For Chileans, September 11th marks a different tragedy—the anniversary of the 1973 coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. This timely book weaves together thirty years of declassified documents with a gripping narrative of America’s involvement in the affair. At a National Security Council meeting in 1970, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird said of Allende, “We want to do everything we can to hurt him and bring him down,” and a C.I.A. memo from the same year describes efforts of a key ally “to increase the level of terrorism in Santiago.” This terrorism included the assassination of René Schneider, the constitutionalist commander-in-chief of Chile’s armed forces, which was carried out with C.I.A.-provided funds and submachine guns. The evidence that Kornbluh has gathered is overwhelming. As Colin Powell recently remarked about the United States’ role in the Pinochet coup, “It is not a part of American history that we are proud of.”♦